


Run to Beat the Sunlight

by inspirit11



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: (eventual) smut, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Blood and Violence, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-01-20 16:24:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inspirit11/pseuds/inspirit11
Summary: “I could have saved you the trouble of working that out.” Senior CSI Doyoung Kim looked like death warmed over, probably because he had downed an entire bottle of wine and fallen asleep on his couch, aggravating his already incredibly tense physique, as was his Saturday night tradition.“Goodness knows you only have a limited amount of intelligence to spare even in your own field. Do, as the kids say these days,stay in your lane.”Taeyong’s mouth curled into a pleased smile.“Someone’s chipper this morning.”“You do look especially sprightly today,” Yuta couldn’t help adding. Being a detective in Seoul came with few silver linings but riling up their dear Doyoung was definitely one of them.





	1. An eventful start to the day

**Author's Note:**

> Author has incredibly limited knowledge of both Seoul and police forces and detectives and crime labs and is working mostly off knowledge gained from a decade of watching crime procedurals (tho mostly inspired by b99) so please bear with her and kindly point out mistakes and discrepancies for her to fix (as well as any typos). Thank you!!
> 
> Title from the Broods, 'Heartlines.'

“A patch of thinner blood in the stain on the couch – someone should have told him this cream didn’t match the colour of his walls – suggests the victim was stabbed right there on it and left to bleed out around it–”

Taeyong moved fractionally closer to the blood pooled at the bottom of the couch as he spoke, Yuta at his back, trying to take in as many details as his addled brain would allow at this ridiculous hour. He kept getting distracted by the imposing sight of Seoul’s skyline visible from the victim’s window wall. Below, an upmarket neighbourhood in Gangnam was relatively still.   

“I could have saved you the trouble of working that out.” Senior CSI Doyoung Kim looked like death warmed over, probably because he had downed an entire bottle of wine and fallen asleep on his couch, aggravating his already incredibly tense physique, as was his Saturday night tradition.

“Goodness knows you only have a limited amount of intelligence to spare even in your own field. Do, as the kids say these days, _stay in your lane._ ”

Taeyong’s mouth curled into a pleased smile.  “Someone’s chipper this morning.”

“You do look especially sprightly today,” Yuta couldn’t help adding. Being a detective in Seoul came with few silver linings but riling up their dear Doyoung was definitely one of them.

“Watch it, Nakamoto,” Doyoung snarled, glowering, before angrily snapping on a pair of gloves and hurrying to the other side of the room to terrorise a poor subordinate who was in danger of accidentally knocking over a lamp in his quest to swab a door handle for DNA.

What should have been a blissfully uneventful Sunday had turned into a high-profile murder investigation which Yuta had been rudely awoken to investigate. He took a moment to survey the decidedly swanky loft again, noting the weirdly scarlet wood flooring, ornate glass furniture, the well-stocked bar taking up half a wall. He assumed the vibrant rug that covered most of the lounge space was Persian because he wasn’t sure there were any other types. (The edge of it was soaked in blood now.) Eccentric, for a congresswoman’s son, but not unthinkable.

“What kind of moron chooses Brazilian cherry flooring when they have a dog,” Taeyong muttered next to him, drawing attention to the faint scratches in the loft floor.

“Brazilian cherry sounds like a porn thing.”

Taeyong was probably about to snap at him but an irritated voice interjected.

“Bemoan your pathetic sex life on your own time, Nakamoto.” Captain Seo’s scowling countenance was an unpleasant, though expected addition to the shit show that this morning was turning into. As much of a morning as 4am at a bustling crime scene could be.

“Understood, sir,” Taeyong yelped in response on his behalf, voice high and strained. He was probably getting turned on by the captain’s aggressiveness, the kinky bastard. He’d been painfully infatuated with Gangnam Police Station’s Captain, Johnny Seo, for all the three years Yuta had known him, short temper, unreasonable height and all.

“What do we have.” Yuta was definitely going to learn how to ask questions without making them sound like questions like that one day. For now, he tiredly started reciting everything they knew.

“Girlfriend called it in an hour and a half ago, two thirty-seven, to be exact. Just got back from a trip to Hong Kong, came straight here from the airport, used her key to let herself in. Made it about five steps into the apartment before seeing the congresswoman’s son with the knife still in him. Left her suitcase there –” Yuta pointed to where a bursting navy blue suitcase had fallen on it’s side next to a cream leather armchair, “– and came to check on him – ”

“Made a right mess of our blood pool,” Taeyong muttered sulkily to himself.

“And shook him a bit, checked his pulse, then called us. Claims she sat there in shock till uniforms showed up, we haven’t found any evidence to the contrary. Victim’s dog had been sleeping in the bedroom, she took him with her when she left.”

When Captain Seo nodded, Taeyong continued where Yuta had left off.

“Victim is Jongin Kim, twenty-five, two DUIs on record and an impressive pile of unpaid parking and speeding tickets but no other criminal activity in his history, employed as a dancer in the Korea National Ballet for the past four years. Between that and a probably hefty allowance from his mother, he could have easily afforded this apartment and the Bently parked in his spot in the basement garage so we’re unconvinced he had money trouble. Of course, we’ll look into his finances with a fine-toothed comb anyway!” He yelled the last part when he saw the captain’s eyebrows rise to almost meet his hairline.

“I should hope so,” the Captain bit out furiously, “considering the very essence of your job is not to assume anything until you have enough evidence to make such a sweeping assessment.”

“My apologies, sir,” Taeyong weakly replied, forlornly looking at his precious Doc Martens.

“There’s no sign of forced entry or struggle. Two glasses on the coffee table still containing drinks and a cocktail shaker on the island, still wet.” Yuta pointed to where Doyoung was lifting prints off of the shaker, glaring at it so intently that he was surprised it didn’t burst into flames. “Body was found on this couch.” Yuta pointed again to the huge bloodstain on the couch next to them, where the dark red was stark against the cream leather. The blood had leaked down into the rug and the floor, they could see the smears where Soojung Jung had floundered in her despair.

“Doorman says the victim’s friend, Sehun Oh, came to visit him from approximately ten to ten thirty. Said he seemed agitated both when he arrived and when he left. No other visitors came to see him until Miss Jung showed up at two-thirty.”

Yuta noted that by the time he had finished speaking, the captain had clenched his fists so hard his knuckles had turned a painful white.

When he spoke, it was more threatening than Yuta expected. “The both of you understand the gravity of this case. If I can’t give Congresswoman Bae answers about who murdered her son, and why, within the next seventy-two hours, you might as well miss your sergeant’s exam next week, Detective Lee, because both of your careers will be over.”

With that, he stormed out the door in an enviably dramatic exit.

Over the course of their conversation, the room had become considerably quieter. While no one was looking directly at them, Yuta knew the wretched gossip mongers had heard almost everything and were probably itching to convey the gory details (no pun intended) to their other friends at the precinct about how the captain had ripped them a new one.

“Back to work,” Doyoung barked after a couple of minutes of awkward silence. “And for fuck’s sake, catalogue everything correctly this time.” Taeyong sent him a watery smile before turning to Yuta with large, glassy eyes.

“Why the fuck did I say that,” he whispered. “I know better. I _know_ I know better.”

Yuta wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling him in so that Taeyong was hugged against him, hand pulling his head down to rest against his shoulder. Might as well take advantage of the fact that a spectacle had already been made of them.

“It’s been a shit morning, Yongie,” he murmured. “We have to move past this, yeah? Just do our jobs. Find the answers, build an airtight case, let the captain take the glory.” He felt Taeyong pinch his side at that. “Let’s show him how brilliant you are.”

Taeyong nodded, stepping back to wipe his nose with a handkerchief he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket.

“Thanks,” he sniffed.

“If you two are quite done.” Yuta started at the hiss that came from behind him. Doyoung was clutching both of the glasses from the coffee table, still containing whatever rich people’s drink the victim and his guest had been indulging in, like they’d personally offended him. “I’m heading back to the lab. The grunts will be here bagging evidence for a few more hours.”

Yuta placed a hand on Doyoung’s arm, just above his elbow, squeezing lightly and solemnly replied “We really can’t wait to hear all your ground-breaking insights.” It got Taeyong to grin. Doyoung looked like he’d swallowed a bug. He wrenched his arm away and stalked out of the apartment, marginally less dramatically than the captain had.

“I know I just got in trouble for assuming things,” Taeyong said, “but Jongin Kim’s a tall man. An athlete – _yes, dancers are athletes, shut up Yuta_ – it couldn’t have been easy to hold him down and stab him six times.” They’d both been struck by the killer’s vigour when Medical Examiner Moon had informed them of the likely cause of death.

“Could have been too drunk to fight back. Killer could just have been very strong,” Yuta mused.

“And why leave the knife here? Are they arrogant, that they think we can’t trace it back to them? Or were they just panicked and forgot it?”

“Gonna have to wait to see if Doyoung can get anything useful off it.”

“And where do we even start with motive? His mother is spearheading a bill about changing defamation laws to make it easier for women to allege sexual crimes against offenders. She has no shortage of political enemies right now. And the ballet company’s bound to be fraught with competition, one of them could have killed him to help their own career.”

Yuta knew he had to let Taeyong get it all out, feel overwhelmed right now so he could sort through his emotions and logically think of how to proceed. He had to keep a level head until Taeyong got himself under control.

“We know that, unless it was Sehun Oh or Soojung Jung, the perp would have had a hard time entering and leaving the apartment. We know that, somehow, the dog was apparently calm enough to be sleeping when Jung showed up and the two neighbours that uniforms have questioned so far said they didn’t hear any screaming or sounds of a struggle. And we know that every dumbass off the street can’t walk into a supermarket and buy a switch blade like this. We’ve started investigations on a lot less before, right?” Taeyong nodded slightly, crossed arms slowly becoming less tense. “Let’s start with questioning the girlfriend. Captain’s probably going to notify the congresswoman himself. We can question her later, too.”

They both grimaced at the reminder of the stakes of this case.

“It’s going to be a long week,” Taeyong sighed.

“Look on the bright side,” Yuta replied. “The captain remembered when you’re sitting the sergeant’s exam. Maybe your totally inappropriate crush isn’t completely unrequited after all.”

Taeyong smacked him so hard his arm throbbed all the way back to the station.

 

 


	2. It's in the details

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soojung Jung’s lawyer nodded at her to continue. Yuta felt a twinge of sympathy, seeing her clutch her hoodie more tightly around her, shivering. The interrogation room was always uncomfortably cold, one of Captain Seo’s less compassionate policies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im procrastinating studying for my tests so i'm putting this up much earlier than i thought i would. there are a lot of things i wanted to add but planning these scenes is surprisingly labour intensive haha.

“I’d had a fight with my friend in Hong Kong, the one I was staying with.”

Soojung Jung’s lawyer nodded at her to continue. Yuta felt a twinge of sympathy, seeing her clutch her hoodie more tightly around her, shivering. The interrogation room was always uncomfortably cold, one of Captain Seo’s less compassionate policies.

They’d been in the room a while, going through some warm up questions about Kim – his friends (plenty), his enemies (aside from a couple of nasty pieces of work from the ballet company, none came to mind), his relationship with his mother (mostly cordial, they didn’t speak much but there didn’t seem to be any bad blood). Yuta honestly wasn’t sure how far they could trust her. Though they were lucky she’d even agreed to come down to the station with little fuss after the night she’d had. The lawyer had turned up her nose at the cramped space and unforgiving metal chairs and nearly thrown a fit when they’d asked to take fingerprints for ‘exclusion purposes.’

“I’d just wanted to come home to Jongin. I bought my ticket on the way to the airport and took the first available flight. When I got to his apartment –”

“One moment, Miss Jung,” Taeyong interrupted. “We checked the details of your flight. You landed at eleven-seventeen pm. It shouldn’t have taken you more than an hour to get through customs and another thirty minutes to get to Mr Kim’s apartment. Yet you only reached the apartment well after two am.”

Jung bit her lip, squeezing her interlocked fingers. She looked beseechingly to her lawyer who only nodded again, expression kind.

“When I got out of the airport, I asked my driver, Jongdae, to wait for a few minutes while I – I smoked.”

Yuta hoped Taeyong would get something useful out of Jung soon. The captain’s three-day deadline was weighing on him. There was no way any fingerprints or blood tests were going to come back in time, even with Seo coming down on all of them like a tonne of bricks to make Kim’s murder a priority, so he knew they’d have to get something out of the upcoming witness interviews. He was itching to get out and spread his legs, maybe see if Doyoung had anything else useful for them. Or at least seeing Doyoung would lift his spirits enough that he would feel less daunted about the whole situation.

“– and I fought about it all the time,” Jung was saying, clearly trying to hold back tears. “He’d been pushing me to quit for years, said he couldn’t understand why anyone would damage themselves like that. As if he didn’t kill himself in that fucking studio every day, always in pain, always needing to be perfect. He said it was because he cared about me, but I know he just thought I was weak."

“If any defamatory details from this interview make it to the press, be assured, gentleman, that this department will be sued within an inch of its life. I will bleed you dry with the full backing of the Jung empire.” Sunyoung Park’s sunny smile never faltered while she spoke, more threatening than any glare could be. She was wearing a baby pink cardigan and had a lilting voice more fit for a schoolteacher than a lawyer, but Yuta suspected that if either of the two women sitting in front of them was capable of killing someone, it wasn’t Jung. 

“We’re quite aware,” Taeyong said through clenched teeth. “We just want the facts. We’re very grateful for Ms Jung’s cooperation so far.”

“It’s fine, Ms Park. I can handle this.”

And that was Yuta’s cue to play tactless cop. “It seems like your relationship with Mr Kim wasn’t especially affectionate before he died.”

“Yuta,” Taeyong snapped, mock glaring at him. Yuta rolled his eyes, feeling Park’s gaze on him like needles digging into his skin.

“I apologize for my partner, Miss Jung,” Taeyong said deferentially. “Will your driver be able to attest to your smoke break?”

“Yes, of course.” Yuta’s statement seemed to have pissed her off, if the way her spine had straightened and her eyes had hardened was any indication.

“If Mr Kim thought so little of you, why were you still with him?”

“That’s an irrelevant question, Detective Nakamoto.”

“I think not, Ms Park,” Yuta replied, smiling wryly. “It’s going to be hard to rule her out as a suspect if we can’t get an accurate picture of their relationship.”

“What do you mean ‘suspect’?” Park’s sunny disposition had turned intimidatingly menacing.

“Mr Kim is conveniently murdered on the same day that his girlfriend decided to take a flight home just in time to find his dead body but not see anything useful. Do the math.”

“So the Seoul Police Force have started considering unconvincing circumstantial evidence as a plausible basis for accusations? I’d be amazed to learn if you’ve ever managed to get anything to stick in court, Detective Nakamoto. I do hope many actual violent criminals haven’t escaped justice because of you.”

Yuta hadn’t taken his eyes off Jung while Park spoke, noting how she shrank into herself with each word, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, her already frail mask of indifference giving way to more pronounced sadness and frustration. He and Taeyong both knew she’d stopped trusting that Park could keep her safe. Though it could be that she just wanted to help.

Taeyong took the cue, spoke gently directly to her. “Ms Jung? It would help us a great deal if you could give us a better picture of what your relationship was like. Any insights into Mr Kim’s character or habits could help us find the killer faster.”

Jung took a deep, shuddering breath before she answered.

“Look we loved each other, I know we did. Being around him just – made me feel inadequate sometimes. Like I wasn’t enough to get through to him. And I know he was struggling with something. When he has – I mean, had, when he had a problem, he’d always stop talking, get spacey. And he drank more. He was always just so wrapped up in his own head. I was getting so tired of him shutting me out and I was terrified he would get behind a wheel drunk again so I lost my temper and said some things I didn’t mean. Really bad things. When I got back, I went straight to his apartment to apologise And. And ask him to give me another chance.”

If this was a performance, Yuta was impressed. The cracks in her voice were impeccably placed to be believable, and he noted the lack of unnecessary theatrics.

“Are you sure you didn’t see anything, though, Ms Jung? Anything at all out of place in the apartment?” Taeyong asked.

It took a moment of reminiscing before Jung shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Realising they’d just wasted one of their precious seventy-two hours in this damned room was a difficult pill to swallow.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Jung.” Taeyong drew a business card out of his pocket as they all got up and held it out to her, not flinching when Park snatched it out of his hand like a viper. She’d have to try harder than that to scare his Yongie, Yuta thought fondly.

Jung was almost passing through the door, Park already on the other side, when she suddenly whipped around and met Yuta’s eyes.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“I remembered something. Just now, when I thought of his drinking, I remembered that I saw – was the cocktail shaker on the bench in the apartment?”

Yuta nodded slowly.

“He only had that thing because of me, I was the one that used it. He usually just drank wine, even with his friends. It’s weird, that he made cocktails out of the blue like that.”

Next to him, Taeyong had stiffened and he suspected he knew why. His mind was probably whirring at the thought of a potential drugging, of someone else making the drinks and slipping in the drug while they were doing so, with Kim none the wiser. Uncaring of Jung’s eyes on them, he grabbed Taeyong’s hand and squeezed hard, hoping it would bring his head out of the clouds. They couldn’t afford to get ahead of themselves now.

“Thank you, Miss Jung,” he heard himself say. “You’ve been very helpful. You can go home and get some rest now. We shouldn’t need to bother you again.”

 

Afterwards, he was slumped at his desk when his phone pinged. A silly grin tugged at his lips before he could stop it when he saw that the caller id flashing across the screen was a bunny emoji.

“I take it Doyoung’s summoning us.” Taeyong’s tone was long suffering but Yuta knew he was amused.

“We are his favourites, stands to reason he’s got results for us so quickly,” Yuta shot back, diligently ignoring Taeyong’s real insinuations.

He was stuffing his phone back into the pocket of his slacks when a panting Mark Lee almost crashed into his desk, Jaemin Na following more gracefully but still hot on his heels.

“Our sons!” Taeyong crowed, rounding the desk so he could rub Mark’s back as he heaved and exchange smiles with Jaemin. “What can we do for you?”

“Yuta forgot to send us the forensics report for the b & e at Sun’s Jeweller’s,” said Jaemin, with the same tone Taeyong had used only moments earlier. It made his partner cackle. “We kind of need those before we stark questioning people more seriously.”

“You sent us some document about breakfast recipes instead. Not cool,” said Mark, mostly recovered from his sprint through the bullpen. That made sense, this was Mark and Jaemin’s first serious case, more than petty theft or minor drug busts. They’d want to make progress as quickly as possible before someone decided they were out of their depth. 

When they’d gotten back to the precinct from Kim’s apartment, Seo’d told them that they’d have to pass on all their other outstanding cases to other detectives until they’d made some headway on Kim’s murder. Yuta had immediately suggested that Mark and Jaemin take Sun’s Jeweller’s. Seo had dismissed the suggestion immediately but Taeyong had insisted they were ready for it. Seo had then rolled his eyes and agreed and then barked at them to fuck off and make themselves useful. Not suspicious at all.

“You’re hopeless today, Yuta.”

“Eat shit, Yong.”

“He could barely get a rise out of the witness just now. Even Mark could have done a better bad cop.” Mark squawked and sputtered that he could in fact do a very effective bad cop, whining at Jaemin to back him up.

Yuta sighed. “I hate being a parent.”

“No time for complaining about bad life choices, dad. We’ve got a burglar to catch before Donghyuck and Renjun solve their theft case, losers are paying for drinks at Peaches for a month,” said Jaemin. Yuta was terribly proud of the ruthless glint in his eye.

The three of them chatted while he pulled up the file and emailed it to Mark. (The breakfast recipes were sent to him as a passive-aggressive joint effort by Taeyong and Yuta's mother to encourage him to eat healthier that he'd accidentally downloaded onto his work computer and then forgotten about.) Taeyong hugged Mark, Yuta chucked Jaemin’s chin and then both boys were off, Yuta and Taeyong following briefly before they headed up to the lab.

“We’re going to have to talk to them about this. They should’ve just requested the report from forensics directly.”

“They’re still rookies, Yong. I think we can stand to protect them from Doyoung’s wrath a little longer. Mark’s heart might give out if he glares at him hard enough. And I don’t trust Jaemin not to say anything stupid and get blacklisted from the whole department.”

Doyoung was staring serenely at the computer on the far side of the room when they reached the lab.

“Thank you for showing up today gentlemen. I know neither of you have any qualms about wasting my time with your loitering so truly, thank you for even this modicum of consideration.” He didn’t spare them a glance, not even as they drew closer.

Before he could react, Yuta snagged the Americano next to the keyboard and took a sip, tilting his head innocently when Doyoung hissed at him.

“Give us good news, Doyoung,” said Taeyong, fixing his best puppy eyes on his friend. “We’re interviewing haughty rich people all day. You know how draining rich people are.”

They shared a look of understanding, Doyoung even had a faint smile on his face. Yuta knew there was some private story they were reminiscing about and that it was something to do with Doyoung’s unconscionably wealthy parents, but he didn’t know more than that.

He only knew what little Taeyong could tell him in good conscience – that Taeyong’s mother had been Doyoung’s nanny for a few years in their childhood, that she’d often brought Taeyong along to keep the boy company after learningn how lonely he was (often to the distaste of Doyoung’s mother), that they’d surprisingly become friends and even more surprisingly stayed in contact  as they grew older even when Taeyong’s mother had found other work. That he had a strained relationship with his parents to say the least.

It was a treasure trove of information for any detective but not so much for a friend. Yuta had made leaps and bounds with Doyoung since he’d met after being transferred to Gangnam Station three years ago but he knew there was a long way to go before he was in a position to know Doyoung the way he wanted to.

“Despite the fact that the captain expects me to pull them out of my ass like a goddamn magician, we still won’t have results for blood tests or fingerprints for a couple of days. I have found something of note, though.”

He turned back to the screen, scanning it.

“He had rohypnol in his system. He’d been slipped a date rape drug before he’d been stabbed.”  

Taeyong was going to be insufferably smug.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who owns Peaches

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a work in progress. I'll add and edit tags as I go along but don't hesitate to ask me to tag something if I forget or leave it out! 
> 
> please! come say hi on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/cantwritethisdown)


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